So now I was to meet the Fatimid army under the leadership of caliph ( or is it Sultan ) Peter Entwistle
I outscouted him and was very happy about it. Once again enemy propaganda will tell you the Tibetans invaded but that's a pure lie. I had nothing to say about it .
Pete tried to have some terrain but I managed to put a big 10 x 10 open terrain right in the middle which I must admit helped a lot.
Now the Fatimid deployed some strong infantry tugs on my right. One of the tugs is full of dreaded LS and all other infantry do have some nasty 2 Hand Cut&Crush anti-mounted weapons.
I know the picture is a bit ... well Ok but so you can see his other flank, full of SK or SK depoyed guys. I suspect he wanted to have them move quickly away as SK ( 2 tugs of flexible arab cavalry and an SK SUG )
Those forces would be met by the nepalese ally with support of cataphract. Kind of overkill
My guess what that Pete wanted me to deploy my cataphracts facing his fierce cavalry and that drilled cavalry would the be able to turn smartly right and go away so I would be facing his rather numerous infantry and LS ! so I deployed my cataphracts more to the center and would let the khotanese ally shoot at the mameluks
There will be a gap as the game was tense and no time for pictures
So What happened : on my right flank the Khotanese went forward to slow the opposition down . I was helped by my opponent's generalship who seems to have decided not to do battle before tea time ( B&W tokens do not make for great manoeuvres ). But that will not last .
In the center, the Cats will advance and have a rather inconclusive fight with some arab infantry and I will have to suffer at the hands of the arab LS .
But on my left, the kothanese rushed towards the 3 ugs and managed to shoot them to near death before going to melee . After that they would try to reinforce the center but it will be too late. The cats noticing that their presence was not needed did wheel and rush towards the Fatimid camp using a lot of red and yellow tokens and those guys will save the day for me .
There was a heavy fight on my right that got nearly crushed but barely managed to hold
By luck I will have some extraordinary shooting and break one of the arab spearmen shooting on white dice, always a wound during 2 turns while the mamluks will fail to kill my smallish TUG
I keep trying to get out of LS reach and try killing infantry with my cataphracts, but it is a hard task indeed
A fresh group of cataphracts is nearing the fatimid's camp but my fight vs his infantry is not going well
Caliph Pete seems perplexed
Here my kothanese died all 3 tugs ! The Fatimid were near breaking so I tried a charge but it failed and my 3rd tug was also annihilated by the mamluks who had found their dice back .
And I had lost a cat so I needed to be quick and my cats got into some unprotected horses, killed the quickly, charged the camp, killed the camp and that killed the fatimid army one turn before the fatimid could kill me . So 15-9 for me !
A nice hard fought game
I knew that SP average infantry would be difficult to face but had to try and this time victory came from the mounted bow auxiliaries ( or allies ) .
but those thin cans are difficult to manoeuver
And so it ended
